A Quick Ting On Afrobeats

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MY PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH AFROBEATS

Long before our communities required us to refer to our elder family friends as aunties and uncles. Long before we assumed our default roles as the official in-house translators for our parents. Long before the heated debates over which rice grain tastes better in jollof (hint: It rhymes with Illuminati). Nigerian Afrobeat and Ghanaian highlife were the roaring soundtracks that aided many West African migrants when settling into new and often cold lands.

For children of West African migrants, weekends were two-day retreats to reconnect with 'aunty', 'uncle' and your favourite of their children. These days would be filled with warm memories of family friends who pronounced your full name with the vim of your mother. The music played at these family functions would be laced with classic proverbs and subtle metaphors, staying true to the oral storytelling tradition of Africa. In these safe spaces of home, hope was marinated so deep into consciousness that racial microaggressions and stereotypes about Africa wouldn't affect the newer bodies our parents were to birth and nurture abroachie (abroad in Akan language).

Our parents christened us with names that provided us with a grounding, a root to a place where the majority look just like us.

Hyphenated identities like Black-British, Black-African, or Black-other for us, would become the required way to describe our heritage on awkward census forms. Questions surrounding our identity would grow louder as we grew up in countries that didn't celebrate us like we were celebrated when we were at home, church and hall parties.

Who are we?
Who are we?
Who are we?

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FROM BROADWATER FARM TO LAMBETH TOWN HALL: THE HALL PARTY EXPERIENCE

This was the sound of sunshine; it vibrated from each corner of the hall. This hall, however, was no ordinary hall. No, this hall was carved out especially for us, with rich smells of a cuisine that we couldn't wait to consume and women who looked so joyous, you couldn't help but smile. Awkwardly, we would stare into the VHS camera, where the 'videoman' would zoom in à la Google Earth (owing to alcohol intolerance). This was the hall party of all hall parties and there I was in my oversized Sunday best, assured by my extended family that I would 'grow into it.' I was Mumsy's No. 1 non-mover, stiffly perched against the wall perusing how the bodies of my family and friends magically moved to the hypnotic drum patterns of our music. Eventually the ancestors would warmly push me into the periphery of the dancing circle. They would pull my limbs and shoulders in an attempt to capture the rhythm needed for the skanking* showdown I was to partake in.

Sundays after Catholic Church were for respite. A much needed pause before the imminent mist of Monday and the new school week. Uncle** Francis aka Money Matters entered the narrow corridor of our flat. His high top was freshly cut, his eyes redly stern and his fetish for black leather clearly visible as his long trench coat laced the floor of the corridor. The Sankofa Santa brought brown paper bags filled with imported CD's (remember 'em?). With sheer enthusiasm, he would exclaim, "LATEST" whilst pulling a new CD from the bag.

His eclectic collection had it all, it was African music in a bag! Almost every album cover was illustrated with Windows '97 Word Art fonts featuring colours that made no sense whatsoever. This was our family's weekly music session. We would all bond over lyrics that my siblings and I didn't always understand, but that never mattered because the familiar foundation of polyrhythms, organ chords and digital brass were home to us. This would become an early intensive course in music criticism for me and siblings. These CD's would be played at an array of forthcoming family celebrations including but not limited to birthdays, christenings, graduations, weddings and everything in between.

In hindsight some of the safest spaces I have ever experienced were decaying church halls, overcrowded living rooms, the Broadwater Farm Community Centre and anywhere else that had a framed picture of the Akwabba*** woman pinned to the wall. These spaces were all epicentres of a mini GH****. Even though we were immersed in an African environment at home, our after-school evenings were still spent watching American hip hop and R&B music videos; back then this was the music that appealed more to our young minds. Our palette for African polyrhythms was yet to mature, but our parents would be sure to change that.

Daddy Lumba. Nakorex. Kojo. Antwi. Pat Thomas. George Darko. C.K. Mann. A.B. Crentsil are just some of the names that transport me back to this time.

GOING 'BACK' AND COMING 'BACK'.

Routine summer trips back to Ghana in my late teens humbled me and my brothers. Cockerels and the cries of every church denomination replaced what we knew as alarm clocks. Mosquitoes would feast on our uninitiated fresh skin like we were buffets. It was an experience that meant we walked everywhere, breaking pedometer world records and pit stopping every few metres to greet extended relatives who would stare inquisitively and question our heritage in Twi dialect.

Upon returning to London, hall parties no longer enticed me. Like any clueless teenager, I began seeking independence which brought with it a heavy reluctance to accompany my mum to hall parties, functions on either ends of the Victoria Line. It seemed I wasn't the only one, my friends had also developed the same disengagement. At the time, I ignorantly thought my love affair with hall parties was over. I had figured this was a natural development of growing up. So, me and my peers would go on the search for alternative activities that aligned with our teenhood and sense of independence away from our parents. In my case this meant immersing myself at music festivals sponsored by cheap lager brands.

THE TEENS TO THE UK FUNKY UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE

The soundtracks of my formative years were filled with the early rise of a genre called hiplife* with artists like Reggie Rockstone, Obrafour and Tic-Tac. For me, this music was familiar and reminded me of home and because of that it didn't excite me at the time. It wasn't until my teens, when my younger sibling introduced me to a new cross-continental sound via his regular mixes and MP3 blog downloads that things began to change. This sound would become known as UK Funky House. This discovery was coupled with the visual representation of the Black Stars, Ghana's national men's football team playing at their first ever World Cup in 2006. Strange as it was, this triggered something in me and I started to solidify my bond to the motherland. It was thrilling to watch a football team that looked much like the men I had grown up with. The Black Stars would celebrate goals with infectious choreography which would later be shared across all forms of social media These men moved like the family and friends I had grown up with. They were on the international stage as extensions of us

Then came my university experience, which housed another significant period in the development of my cultural identity. Early UK funky house raves brought the copious catalogue of skanks and bootleg instrumentals converted into air horn anthems. The dance floor finally brought those of African descent to the forefront, after being in the contemporary musical shadow of our West Indian brethren for quite some time. Funky house, sonically, was something we had heard remnants of in our homes. Funky house would become the sound of Afro-Caribbean societies (ACS's) throughout the country, colouring every Black university cook up, drink up and rave in sight.

UK funky house MCs spraying* in languages such as Pidgin, Twi and Yoruba was reminiscent of the old-school hall party MC. This would be the first time I saw parts of the musical Africanness I was exposed to as a child outside of the home.

Upon leaving university with a clear sense of my African identity, I picked up a pen and started writing. One of my first blog posts was on highlife and hiplife songs, which I recalled from my early experience of hall parties. I wrote about what these songs meant to me growing up. A year later, I wrote an article for The Guardian titled, 'Black Artists: You have to know where you're from', where I spoke to British artists of African descent, such as Skepta and Estelle, about songs that reminded them of home. This period would be coupled with the early rise of a new iteration that would be called Afrobeats. In the UK, Afrobeats would bring with it a different intersection of class, identity and race, one that was for the first time rooted solely in Africanness.

So, like most who have West African parents in the West, my relationship with this cultural phenomenon and its subsequent subgenres represents home. The question is: 'how does one describe a sound/s or movement that embodies home?'

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* to dance to the music

** not blood related relative but uttered as sign of respect for elders

*** 'welcome' in the Twi dialect

**** a colloquial abbreviation for Ghana simply using the first two letters

* Ghanaian musical style which fuses hip hop, reggae and...